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I belong to a Blogging Buddy circle. It’s a great way to get comments and internet exposure for you and your business.

What is a Blogging Buddy Circle?

A Blogging Buddy Circle is a number of people who visits your blog on a regular basis, and make constructive, useful comments on it.

Why do you need a Blogging Buddy Circle?

If you need traffic, a Blogging Buddy Circle can help you get some.

If you want to know that someone is reading your blog, having Blogging Buddies reassures you that your writing will not go totally unnoticed.

If you want to tailor your blog posts to what people want to read, comments and feedback from your Blogging Buddies can steer you in the right direction.

If you want to create or be part of an online community that helps its members to grow, Blogging Buddies are a good way to start.

What are the benefits of Blogging Buddy Circles?

All of the above, plus more traffic to your websites/blogs if you comment consistently. There’s no point in being a Blogging Buddy if you only receive comments – you have to make them too.

How does it work?

It’s an agreement between bloggers to visit and comment on each others’ blogs on a regular basis. You sign up, and then you start commenting on each others’ blogs. Simple as that. You can set up a one-on-one Blogging Buddy relationship, or you can set up what I call a Blogging Buddy Circle, which has more than two members.

How do I set up a Blogging Buddy Circle?

If you don’t know anyone online, you could start by leaving comments on blogs you like. You might get a reply! Use that first contact, if appropriate, to ask for a Blogging Buddy relationship.

Contact everyone you know who has a blog that has some sort of connection with your blog, your business or your hobbies. Say that you are setting up a Blogging Buddy circle, and ask if they would like to participate.

If you belong to a discussion group that is relevant to your blog, your business or your hobbies, send out a request for Blogging Buddies.

How to make it work

You need to decide realistically how many blogs you are willing to visit and comment on regularly.

Decide how regular is regular: once a week, once a fortnight, once a month? What will fit into your regular schedule?

Decide, on the basis of your answers to those two questions, how many people/blogs you can comfortably handle in your Blogging Buddy circle.

It might help to have one person being the Keeper of the Blog Addresses if you have a fairly large circle. In my Blogging Buddy Circle there is a wonderful lady who has the list of blogs on a page of her website, and regularly posts changes. It makes it really easy to visit all the blogs on your designated Blogging Buddy day(s), because you can simply go to one web page for all the links. Bookmark the webpage, and you’ve got it made.

Best practice for blog commenting

Today I found a very helpful blog post from Noel Lyons about how to comment on blogs to get the best return. It’s http://www.noellyons.com/blog/5-simple-steps-to-branding-yourself-online/ . It talks about how to comment on blogs and what to include. For instance, when you make a comment, you’re always asked for your name. Noel suggests that you put something else after your name – a short description of who you are or what your business or blog is. This sounds like a really useful idea to me, and I’m going to start implementing it.

Introducing My Blogging Buddy Circle

Here are my Blogging Buddies in no particular order.All of these people are professional coaches. Some of them have a couple of blogs. How they manage to keep two blogs updated as well as run a coaching business is beyond me: I have enough trouble keeping five websites and a blog updated regularly as well as run my coaching and editing business!

There’s a lot more to Blogging Buddies than this post mentions. For instance, lots of people have only one buddy at a time, and use them as a sounding board, a proofreader or a co-author. A quick search on your favourite search engine will bring up several mentions of Blogging Buddies. Here are some excellent ones.

If you’d like to add your experiences to this discussion, tell us how commenting on blogs has helped your business and whether you belong to a Blogging Buddy Circle or have a single Blogging Buddy, or none at all.

Blogging circles are a great tool. Another great way to help others is to become their friend on Facebook. Then when they post blog articles, you can “share” them with your list as well. That exposes the blogs to hundreds or even thousands more readers then before.

I think that being in a blogging circle helps out greatly especially when you are starting out with a new blog their is a few visitors to your site. Working in a blogging circles helps in a sense of building relationships with other and others allowing for both positive and negative feedback.

This is an excellent article. Very detailed and lots of great info. I read Noel’s article and am also going to start using what he suggests. Thanks a bunch!!

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